In a first for me, I’ve got a guest post/tutorial on the Crafting Con website. It’s for a My Little Pony inspired hoodie tutorial. This month is all about My Little Ponies so I’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s posts for inspiration. Little Bit is loving MLP right now, so I’m getting lots of requests for My Little Pony related items.

There seems to be a big push lately for STEM clothes for girls. And why not? Girls can like things other than princesses and butterflies! There have actually been a few kickstartercampaigns on the subject lately. (I’m bummed only one of these got funded.)

In the past couple of months I’ve had the chance to create a couple of STEM themed dresses for Little Bit. One for Mad Scientist Day at school and the other for Pi Day — after all, this year’s Pi Day was pretty epic.

Both of these dresses ended up being MODKID patterns and my geeky themed fabrics are from Spoonflower.

We started off with a very old long sleeve knit polo that belonged to Mr. Byte that had recently landed in the donate pile. I snagged it thinking the soft knit would be perfect for leggings for Little Bit. I managed to cut all the pattern pieces out of the sleeves so I still have the body of the shirt to use for another project — thinking Monkey bar shorts for when it gets warmer.

Since I wasn’t taking an existing pair of sweatpants to make this skirt out of, I pulled out the skirt pattern from the Go To Leggings Pattern and the Kangaroo pocket from the swim coverup in Sewing MODKID Style. Following the directions for the skirt and pocket, this came together pretty quickly.

The MODKID instructions call for lining the kangaroo pocket, so I had just enough of this super soft mink/minky-like Frozen fabric (left over from another project that is cut but not sewn) for the lining of the pocket. And how fun to be carrying Anna and Elsa around in your pocket.

One of the patterns I bought for the recent bundle up promotion was the Rachel Dress by MODKID. This is a knit pattern with a drop waist and a ruffled asymmetrical hem.

For the first item to made from the bundle up patters, I chose this one since I had fabrics in my stash that I thought would work and I need practice with knits and the serger. I’ve sewn knits before with just a regular needle and thread, but this was my first time using a double needle, wooly nylon, and a serger for knits and boy do I need a lot of practice.

I’ve learned quite a few things working on this dress:

a double needle is my new favorite thing and is absolutely worth taking the time to change the needle for

speaking of needles, they’re not nearly as scary to change as I thought (yes, my sewing machine is a year and a half old and this is the first time I’ve changed a needle)

screwing up on a serger is a lot harder to recover from

a serger will let you continue sewing with the foot up

there is a point where you have to scrap a project and either give up or start over — I didn’t quite reach that point, but there were a couple of points I questioned whether or not I should continue.

I just did another Modkid Sew Along for the newly released London Dress PDF Pattern. I love the way the Modkid PDF patterns are assembled once printed. They really are easy and the gray shaded overlaping area leaving nothing to question as to how exactly to put the pieces together.

This pattern did prove to be more difficult for me. Many of the more experienced participants in the sew along used words like quick and easy to describe this pattern. I did have issues with assembly but overall was pleased with the results.

Em picked out this fabric last time we were at Finch. It was the end of the bolt so I took what was left which I think was about a yard and 12 or 13 inches. There was just enough fabric to attempt to pattern match the bodice and cut out the rest of the pattern pieces. I do have to say, I think I did a pretty good job matching the bodice.

Because I was using such a busy pattern, I wanted to use something more plain for the pockets, but the plain fabric seemed a bit too plain, so I decided to appliqué two of the characters on the pockets. Add in a little hand embroidery for the eyes and some of the smaller details (no I don’t do embroidery, but that’s what google is for).

To differentiate the pockets from the busy background, I added navy piping around the pockets. I also added the piping between the bodice and skirt since there was no way I was going to have the pattern match.

Overall, I’m thrilled with the results. I’m not sure this will be one of Em’s favorite dresses because it doesn’t have the twirl factor she prefers, but she didn’t shun it when I showed it to her which is huge.